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“Yeah. And I’m so scared I’ll hurt you both.”
I banged my hand against the steering wheel. “Marissa. Back at the cabin, I thought you were ready to commit to me. But now we’re back to this. Let me tell you something. The only way you’ll hurt me is if you hurt me. You can’t blame it on your mother or the Hudaknocker. It’s time for you to take control of things. Because after the next date, we'll be back on that stage, and I don’t want to be sweating what you have to say. I need you to be all in.”
“I am.” She let out a long exhale. “I like you, Bjorn. I like you a lot. The other night was perfect. The best date I’ve been on. Bibi wants to bring your pack here, and I want that for all of you. Maybe we could live in a cute little cabin near one of those lakes in the mountains. But what if my mom won’t let this go, and she takes it out on your pack?”
I shook my head. “Is this one of those, if you love me, you’ll let me go type of things?”
“I don’t know what it is.” Her gaze was focused straight ahead.
I wasn’t letting her change the subject. “Here’s the thing, Marissa. I’m not leaving.”
She was quiet for too long, but I didn’t miss the tear running down her cheek.
“Keep going. I’m pretty sure we went out farther than we did last night,” she finally said.
“We could forget this whole thing and head up to one of those lakes,” I suggested. “I’m so fucking sick of the Hudaknocker having me by the nuts.”
She laughed. “I’d love to go to the lake more than anything, and we can, but we should probably find the nut holder first.”
It was the right thing to do, even if all I wanted to do was the wrong things. Drive until Sunset Springs was a distant memory. Whatever it would take to make Marissa forget the past and focus on the future.
Because unless she did, this might not work out after all.
The air got misty. A rumbling echoed through the air, and Marissa screamed just as a giant avalanche of snow slid off the mountain and onto our truck.
ChapterEighteen
Marissa
We were stuck in a damn snowbank.
Inside the snowbank. And everything felt frozen—including time, my voice, my thoughts. All I could hear was my own breathing.
I turned to Bjorn. Getting out of this wouldn’t be as easy as throwing the truck in reverse. We’d been hit by an avalanche, which was undoubtedly a risk in the mountains on a warm winter day. But it was so lovely out, and Mother Nature had lulled us into a false sense of security.
Something was different about him.
“Bjorn,” I whispered, but he didn’t acknowledge me.
Jamming his shoulder against the door, he let out a noise that definitely wasn’t human. I’d told him I wanted to see his bear, but not like this. Never like this. Maybe I’d underestimated his animal because, in my head, bears were cute and cuddly, and I was totally forgetting the fact that they were ferocious wild animals because it didn’t serve my narrative.
Right now, that seemed like a metaphor for my entire life.
He pushed again, and this time, the glass shattered. His body…was changing. His bones snapped, and he struggled to pull off his jacket. Fur blossomed on his skin, and he just kept getting bigger. I couldn’t look away from him, fascinated by the metamorphosis, but when his face went from human to bear, I thought I was going to pass out.
This couldn’t be real.
But I didn’t have any supernatural relic to blame this on, and it was time to believe in Bjorn’s power. Because it would likely be the only thing that would save my life.
Bjorn rumbled out of the driver’s seat and was up on his back feet, pushing the truck. The engine was still on, and my body was shaking so badly. I didn’t know if it would be better to climb over the console and shut it off, try to work with him to steer out of the snow, or get the hell out of the truck in case it blew up. But I couldn’t move. The way Bjorn was rocking the thing, I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to communicate with him. He was one hundred percent in the bear zone.
He climbed back into the truck and snatched me like he read my mind. His paws ended in giant claws. I could feel them pressing against my skin, and he’d probably rip right through my leather jacket. Not that it even mattered at this point. But it was cold out there, and I was not covered with fur.
“Bjorn,” I managed. My whole body was shaking so hard. “Let me take off the seatbelt.”
He pulled on it so hard it came out of the door. Time stopped for a moment, and we looked at each other.
In his bear form, he was huge. His breath was raspy, his fur almost a translucent white that would get lost against the snow. Camouflage. Wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing right now. But those eyes…Bjorn was still in there. He made a noise that was somewhere between a growl and a groan.
